I promise to remember for next year | Opinion

Every year it’s the same dilemma. I take surveys, as unscientific as they may be. I conduct Google searches, I ask rabbis and cantors and Alexa (although I don’t imagine that she is Jewish, but I ask Alexa everything). Each and every year there is at least one Shabbat that coincides with one of the nights of Hanukkah. And we need to light both Shabbat candles and those that fit into our menorahs. The big question here is which do we light first?

This year, Shabbat came out on the seventh night of Hanukkah. At our congregation at Willow Wood, we lit candles, said the prayers and sang Hanukkah songs. But which candles did we light first? I almost already don’t remember. You could say that if we used an electric menorah we might not have had to make the decision … not true at all and besides, then we have yet another decision … do we tighten the bulbs from left to right or account for the audience facing it and tighten from right to left.

To this day I can remember my mom wrestling with this subject when she would put the electric menorah in the window. Do we light from left to right for us, or right to left, so passers by can see that we know what we’re doing? I think this was one of the few questions about Judaism I’d ever heard Mom pose, except maybe during Passover when she would ask each member of our family of six if we liked our matzo balls soft or hard. This would lead to her next conundrum when the answers came out evenly distributed. In any event, I’m certain Mom would not know the answer to the which-comes-first query. I hardly remember ever lighting Shabbat candles when I was growing up. This was not because she didn’t know when it was Shabbat, but because she was deathly afraid of fires.

During this past year’s California wildfire season when my brother Gary and his family found themselves smack in harm’s way and having to be evacuated from their home, I was thankful that our Mom was no longer here to panic over his safety. I remember like it was yesterday, any time my parents went out and left me in charge of my brother and our little sisters, she would caution me that under no circumstances was I to fall asleep. In case of a fire, she wanted me to be awake and alert in order to get everyone out of the house. And so of course we had an electric menorah rather than one that needed candles.

So getting back to our December dilemma of which candles to light first during a Hanukkah Shabbat. The answer is … drumroll … the menorah should be lit before the Shabbat candles. Why is this, I wondered? The answer is … drumroll … because once the Shabbat candles are lit, well then it’s already Shabbat, and no creative practices should be performed on Shabbat, even the lighting of the menorah. On Saturday evening the procedure could be different. The menorah could be lit before the Havdalah candle. Which didn’t really make a lot of sense to me because I figured that it was still Shabbat before the Havdalah candles were lit and why was it okay to light the menorah if it was still Shabbat on Saturday afternoon/evening? And so I poked around and did a lot more research on the matter. And of course I found another opinion on the matter which made more sense to me. Because you are to perform the more common or ordinary act of lighting the Havdalah candle before the kindling of the candles for the menorah. And at least that made more sense because by then, Shabbat would be over, or as they say in Israel, Shabbat would have already left.

So now that I really know the answer to these burning questions, I hope that when next Hanukkah rolls around I won’t have to do any more digging or researching in order to decide which candles to light first on any Friday night of Hanukkah. At least I hope.